216 • 13 THE ROOTS OF ARAB BITTERNESSlearned about the agreement from Turkish agents trying to draw him out
of the war and, indeed, from the British and French themselves. To Husayn,
the advantages of directing an Arab revolt against the Turks, who had in¬
terned him for so long, outweighed the perils of Sykes-Picot, which the
British claimed would not involve the lands he hoped to rule. To other Arab
nationalists, this Anglo-French agreement betrayed their cause; worse, it
was kept secret until after the war.
The Balfour Declaration
More public was a decision by the British cabinet to help establish a Jewish
national home in Palestine, formally announced on 2 November 1917. This
was the famous Balfour Declaration, so called because it appeared as a let¬
ter from the foreign secretary, Lord Balfour, to Lord Rothschild, titular
president of Britain's Zionist Federation. The letter is analyzed in Chapter
16, but we note here its salient points: (1) The British government would
help set up a national home in Palestine for the Jews; (2) it would not un¬
dermine the rights or status of Jews choosing not to live there; and (3) it
would not harm the civil or religious rights of Palestine's "existing non-
Jewish communities." The Arabs' main objection to the Balfour Declara¬
tion was that they made up over nine-tenths of the population of what
would later become Palestine. How could anyone create a home for one
group of people in a land inhabited by another? Worse still, the inhabitants
had never been asked if they wanted their land to become the national
home for a people who would be coming from far away. Moreover, the Bal¬
four Declaration never mentioned the political rights of non-Jewish Pales¬
tinians, a point that still stirs deep Arab resentment. If Britain tried to
realize the Zionist dream of a Jewish state, what would be the political sta¬
tus of Palestine's Arabic-speaking Christians and Muslims? Did this docu¬
ment not contradict the Husayn-McMahon correspondence and other
statements meant to reassure Arabs who had thrown themselves into the
revolt against the Turks?
THE POSTWAR PEACE SETTLEMENTHow would these conflicting commitments be reconciled, once the war
was over? In November 1918 the guns in Europe fell silent. Everyone
hoped the diplomats would make a lasting peace. During the war, Presi¬
dent Woodrow Wilson, the greatest statesman of the day, had proposed a
set of principles called the Fourteen Points, upon which he wanted the